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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA SOUTHERN DIVISION

GREATER BIRMINGHAM MINISTRIES; and ALABAMA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF ALABAMA; ROBERT J. BENTLEY, in his official capacity as Governor of Alabama; LUTHER J. STRANGE, in his official capacity as the Alabama Attorney General; JOHN MERRILL, in his official capacity as the Alabama Secretary of State; and SPENCER COLLIER, in his official capacity as the Secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, Defendants. Civil Action No. _________

COMPLAINT

FILED

2015 Dec-02 AM 10:23U.S. DISTRICT COURTN.D. OF ALABAMA

Case 2:15-cv-02193-LSC Document 1 Filed 12/02/15 Page 1 of 69

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INTRODUCTION

Since the turn of this century, approximately 22.4 million votes have been cast in Alabama elections. In that time, there has been only one documented case where one Alabama voter sought to impersonate another. Despite the extreme rarity of voter fraud, in June 2011, the Alabama Legislature enacted House Bill 19

(“HB

19”),

a law whose purported purpose is to prevent voter fraud by requiring voters to present photographic identification to vote in-person or absentee (the

“Photo

ID

Law”).

According to the Alabama Secretary of State, the Photo ID Law was estimated to immediately disfranchise at least 280,000 registered voters. If the Photo ID Law remains in place, hundreds of thousands more eligible and registered voters will be barred from voting in the years to come. It is no accident that a disproportionate number of those disfranchised voters are African-American and Latino. Indeed, the Photo ID Law is simply the latest chapter in

Alabama’s

long and brutal history of intentional racial discrimination. For five decades,

Alabama’s

use of discriminatory voting schemes has necessitated repeated federal intervention. Now, Alabama again seeks to disfranchise thousands of


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African-American and Latino voters

—

all in the name of

“curing”

a voter fraud problem that does not exist. Although the law was passed in 2011, Alabama did not immediately seek to implement it. At that time, all voting law changes in Alabama were subject to preclearance review pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. §10304). Under Section 5, Alabama was obligated to obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a three-judge federal court before enforcing new voting laws that might burden voters of color. But Alabama never sought preclearance review for its Photo ID Law. Instead, for two years, Alabama delayed implementation of the law, awaiting the final resolution of the

Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder

lawsuit, in which a county in Alabama sought to challenge the constitutionality of the preclearance regime. June 25, 2013 was the day Alabama had been waiting for. On that date, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted

Alabama’s

nearly fifty-year-old preclearance obligations. The very next day, free of its preclearance obligations, Alabama announced that it would enforce its Photo ID Law for the 2014 election cycle. The

Shelby County

decision

,

however, did not block suits challenging voting restrictions that are racially discriminatory under other provisions of
